Children's high-chairs are commonplace. A chair significantly different from adult chairs is required for several reasons. A high-chair seat must be higher relative to a seat on adult chairs in order to raise the child or infant to a height so that they may be fed by a seated adult. A smaller seat is required to fit the smaller size of a child. Properly dimensioned leg rests and foot rests are also often found. This smaller size includes a sufficiently small front-to-back seat dimension, allowing the child's legs to bend at the knees. Seat sides and a front restraint are also usually found. A tray is frequently included as well, commonly removably attached to the high-chair.
High-chairs for home use are composed of many parts, assembled in traditional ways using conventional fasteners and manufacturing techniques. A conventional appearance is among the most important properties for a high-chair in order for it to be accepted in the home-use market. Conventional high-chairs often have cracks, gaps, crevices, and other discontinuities as a result of the design. These include discontinuities where two planes of material join, where parts swivel or rotate, and where fasteners penetrate holes. These discontinuities make the high-chair more difficult to clean.
In institutional settings, such as restaurants, ease of cleaning becomes very important. This is true for several reasons. First, time spent cleaning translates into labor costs. Second, less care is often spent by the adults using the high-chair, as the high-chair must be maintained by another party. Third, an institutional high chair may be used serially by a large number of users. Fourth, children unknown and unrelated to one another use a given high-chair, one after the other, all in various states of health. This increases the importance of having an easy to clean high-chair. In an institution such as a hospital, the ease of cleaning and substantially disinfecting a high-chair is of more importance due to the increased likelihood of diseases and the increased likelihood of susceptibility to contagious diseases due to poor health of some users.
Stackability assumes greater importance in institutional settings due to economic forces. The demand for high-chairs varies significantly with time. At some times, as when senior citizen traffic is high, few of the high-chairs are in use. At other times, when family traffic is higher, demand for high-chairs is heavy. The wide swings in high-chair demand in institutions is met by keeping high-chairs out of the way when they are not needed. Stacking is a preferred method of storing as multiple high-chairs can be stored above the same floor space. In restaurants in particular, revenue per square foot is an important measure of productivity, and floor space utilized for storing high-chairs is floor space that could have been used for seating to produce revenue.
Stacking is not a problem-free solution however. High-chairs can be heavy, especially sturdy high-chairs. Stacking and unstacking a high-chair requires lifting the high-chair to a height sufficient to cause one high-chair to slide over another. The stacking commonly requires lifting one high-chair almost vertically over another and dropping the high-chair. The unstacking commonly requires vertically lifting the top high-chair to a height sufficient to clear the high-chair below.
The above described method can be hard on the back of the lifter. The above-described required stacking and unstacking often limits the height to which chairs can be stacked. What would be desirable is a high-chair that can be stacked without requiring the high-chair to be lifted entirely over another, identical high-chair. What has not heretofore been provided is a high-chair stackable largely by moving one high-chair substantially horizontally over another high-chair. What would also be desirable is an easily cleanable high-chair that is formed as a single, integral piece.